Retailers often keep an inventory of goods in distribution centers for later distribution to their customers. These goods are sometimes associated with expiration dates. In response to a customer order, the retailer may retrieve, pack, and/or ship the item to the customer. The storage of a wide variety of items can present certain concerns for the retailer with regard to delivering the items prior to expiration. Managing large inventories of items can be cumbersome for distribution centers that store perishable items, for example, because the expiration dates can occur frequently. In some cases, the customer has the ability to request that a particular item be provided to him or her on a recurring schedule. As distribution centers and the retailers that utilize them grow, managing these inventories and recurring deliveries may pose challenges to retailers and distribution centers alike.
Conventional attempts to solve these problems are ineffective and/or have undesirable side effects or other drawbacks with respect to at least one significant use case.